Avenler

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2. Projects and floors

All work is done in a project; a project consists of floors (ground floor, upper floor, basement…), and each floor has one floor plan.

New project

  1. On the Projects page, choose the New project button and enter the name, the client, the address and a short description. For a quicker start: the New project from template button gives you a ready-made Apartment (seven rooms on one floor), Family house (ground floor and upper floor with stairs) or US Starter House (single story, about 1,600 sq ft; imperial units, NEC circuits, a load center and the US symbol set) project, with walls, rooms, devices, cable routes and a circuit list – which you can then freely rework.
  2. The list can be filtered: Active / Archived, and All / Mine / Shared with me. An archived project is not deleted, it is just moved out of view.
  3. Clicking the project name takes you to the project page: this is the “headquarters”. Everything can be reached from here: the floors, the check summary, the material take-off, the lists, the distribution boards, the sheet header and the drawing set, sharing and the quotations. At the top of the page, the Where am I? bar shows the steps of the work (Floor plan, Circuits, Distribution board, Material take-off, Quotation, Printing): a finished step gets a tick, and the Next step button takes you to the one still missing. The badge of the bar shows how far the project is: Started (a step is still missing), Filled in (every step is there, but the check reports errors), Checked (the check finds no errors either); only then does “All steps are done” appear. Rarely needed settings (sheet header, supply, document language, sharing) are at the bottom of the page, under More settings.

Floors

  • New floor: name, floor level (cm relative to the ground floor; negative for a basement) and ceiling height (cm). After saving, the floor plan editor opens immediately.
  • The ceiling height matters: the program uses it for the default height of the walls, the riser height of the stairs and the length of the cable routes (vertical sections).
  • Each floor has Details (rename, heights), Copy and Delete.
  • Import from another project: in the floor list you can choose the source project and the floors, and then how much to import: Architecture only, With devices (devices and cable routes), or Everything (circuits are matched by reference, missing ones are created). The underlay can also be imported, and a prefix can be added to the name. For similar floors of the same building this saves a lot of drawing.
  • DXF of all floors: from the project page you can export all floors into a single DXF file, placed side by side (see the Printing, drawing set, DXF chapter).
  • IFC import: the IFC import button creates new project floors from selected storeys in an IFC2x3 or IFC4 architectural model. The file is processed in your browser; only the converted drawing and coordinate reference are saved in the project. Check walls, openings and room names after import.

Title block

The Sheet header details button in the More settings part of the project page asks for the project data of the title block of printed drawings (design stage, issue date, etc.). The designer and company details come from your Profile. These appear on the drawing printout and in the drawing set.

Here, the document language selector decides in which language the project's printouts and exports are produced (title block, legend, floor plan labels, schedules, revision sheet), regardless of the interface language. For a new project, the interface language is the default. The label of a new device in a distribution board (Main, RCD1, Q1…) and the name of the quotation section calculated from the drawing are also produced in this language.

Supply

The Supply data button (also under More settings) asks for the project's utility connection point data: phase count (1 or 3), maximum incoming current, fault loop impedance (Ze) and earthing system (TN-C-S, TN-S, TT, IT). This is the supply for the project as a whole, not the feed cable between individual distribution boards (see the Distribution boards chapter for that); it is documentation data, and any field can be left blank.

Revisions

Issued drawing versions are stored in the Revisions section of the project page. Issue a new revision makes an unchangeable snapshot of the project's saved state (floors and drawings, circuits, distribution boards, title block data): anything not yet saved in the editor is not included. The mark is automatically the next letter (A, B, … Z, AA) and can be changed (at most 10 characters, unique within the project); a note can also be added (e.g. “Permit design”). A project can have at most 100 revisions; the content of underlays is not included (only the file name and the fingerprint).

  • For each revision, the list shows the date, the issuer, the note and the changes since the previous one (“+3 socket-outlets, F4 deleted, Consumer unit: +2 devices”).
  • Comparing With current or two selected revisions shows, floor by floor, what has changed: device added / deleted / moved (over 50 mm) / modified, cable route (with length difference), wall, opening, room, stairs, riser (by count), floor, circuit, distribution board, title block. For devices and cable routes, the open on the drawing link jumps to the current drawing.
  • Revision comparison page: the Current and Compare the selected two buttons open a separate page where the From and To selectors compare two revisions, or a revision and the current state. It has four tabs: Drawing colours the changes on the floor plan (green: added, yellow: modified, red: deleted; a moved item is linked to its old position by an arrow), List lists the changes line by line, Quantities shows the quantity difference per material item (before, after, difference; can be filtered to changed items only), Boards shows the changes of circuits and devices. Note: on both sides the quantities are calculated with today's defaults (not the settings at the time the revision was issued).
  • Print: the old state of a revision can be printed in the drawing set (see the Printing chapter); the schedules are produced from the current state, so they are not available for old revisions.
  • Restore (only for the owner): you must type the revision mark to confirm. Before restoring, the program makes an automatic revision of the current state, so the overwritten state is not lost. The floors, drawings, circuits and distribution boards return to the state of the revision; floors created after the revision are deleted together with their underlay (the underlay cannot be restored), and deleted floors are created again. Underlays and title block data do not change. People working on the project get a conflict on their next save and must reload the page. Before the operation, the confirmation dialog lists what will be deleted.

Revision control

The owner or an editor can send an issued revision to any other project member for review. Only the designated reviewer can approve or reject it; a reason is required when rejecting. The status and the reason are shown next to the revision; the printed revision strip also shows the pending and approved status, while a rejected revision is left out.

Workflow in brief

Step by step, with links to the other pages: Electrical design. For issuing and sharing: Electrical installation design maker.

  1. Add a floor → 2. draw the floor plan (walls, openings, rooms) → 3. devices and cable routes → 4. circuits →
  2. distribution board → 6. take-off → 7. quotation → 8. printing. The individual steps are described in the following chapters; the order is not mandatory, but the take-off and the schedules always calculate from the saved drawing, so save first.